The Happy Arab News Service

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Saving the World, Helping America

Last updated: October 6, 2011

August 4, 2007

Sean Penn was the last in a host of celebrities that descended on Venezuela recently to pay tribute to Comandante Chavez. The list of his predecessors includes actor Danny Glover, singer Harry Belafonte and Cindy Sheehan. Chavez generously invited Penn on board of his presidential Airbus jet for a short trip to werstern Venezuela in a company of other dignitaries from Canada, Poland and Burkina Faso (Chavez's 21st century socialism is extremely popular in Burkina Faso. Unfortunately, one of the poorest countries on the planet, Burkina Faso is still dragging its feet with implementation, excusing itself by the absence of oil).

Chavez has always been of a very high opinion of Penn and he had no intention to hide it, even though this could have upset other dignitaries by making them feel underappreciated.

"He's a courageous man," Chavez said as he introduced Penn to reporters and dignitaries during the flight from Caracas to western Venezuela. "He's very quiet, but he has a fire burning inside."

Sean Penn - Burning from inside

Chavez lauded Penn as "a man who is critical of his government and of imperialism". He also complimented Penn on his style of acting and concluded his laudatory session with "And he's anti-Bush!".

This is not to say that Sean Penn remained owing to the Venezuelan president or something. At the end of the trip, Chavez and Penn donned white lab coats and toured an agricultural research laboratory. Here Chavez made a revolutionary speech addressing a crowd of workers and local residents.

While Chavez made a speech, however, Penn stood at a distance alongside the audience, occasionally jotting down notes. He spoke only when Chavez asked the actor to say a few words.

"I came here looking for a great country. I found a great country," Penn told the crowd.

During the trip the guests were also taken to an area at the border with Colombia. There Chavez noted that this is "one of the most tense zones of Latin America". With a map of the region in his hand, Chavez warned his companions that "the U.S. empire has a strong presence on the Colombian side", sending shivers down the spine of Penn and other dignitaries.

Chavez found in Penn an attentive and understanding listener. At the end of a very fruitful and encouraging exchange of ideas and views between the two that touched on various subjects ranging from the situation of the world in general to internal problems of their home countries, Chavez came up with a few highly practical conclusions:

Enlivened by his conversations with Penn, the socialist president lambasted the U.S. government for "destroying the world" with war and warned of brewing economic troubles, saying Washington should do much more for its own poor.

"There could be a revolution there," Chavez said. "We'll help them. The United States must be helped because the United States is going to implode."

Some dignitaries struggled to comprehend how exactly the comandante is going to help the US. Is he going to help America by helping the revolution to happen or by helping America to prevent the revolution? Yet everybody was greatly relieved to know (Penn in particular because he lives in the US) that the comandante is aware of America's brewing economic troubles and has a clear plan of action for saving the US in case some shit happens.

Sean Penn is on fire again as the revolutionary fervor of the Arab Spring is spreading to the faraway shores of North America. Upon landing in the capital of the Libyan revolution - Benghazi, Penn told an AFP reporter

"This is my first visit to inspirational Libya. I am inspired by the Arab Spring."

From Benghazi Penn flew to Tripoli where he praised the courage of the Libyan people. Penn declined to comment on exactly what his plans were during a press conference in Tripoli. But then he added, in Penn's inimitable laconic, yet cutting through, style, "I came here looking for a great country. And I found a great country."

Penn's old friend and source of inspiration, Hugo Chavez, was in shock. For a while Chavez was inclined to dismiss the whole thing as another example of how a gringo always remains a gringo. But that would be racist and Chavez, as everybody knows, is against racism. So, instead, Chavez concluded that Penn's impressionability had made him an unstable and immature individual highly susceptible to media manipulations by the US empire. Chavez made sure though to have the political ignorance of his gringo friend exposed for all revolutionary masses around the world to see.

"The Libyans are resisting the invasion and aggression. I ask God to protect the life of our brother Muammar Gaddafi. They're hunting him down to kill him," he said.

"No one knows where Gaddafi is, I think he went off to the desert ... to lead the resistance. What else can he do?"

These are hard times for the revolutionary brotherhood and the sales of low-cost household appliances and other consumer goods have plunged in Venezuela as the revolutionary masses, dismayed by a string of recent setbacks, cut short on eating and drinking and other acts of consumption, dragging the economy down. There was little Chavez could say to encourage the masses, besides reaffirming Venezuela's support for and solidarity with the embattled revolutionaries in the Middle East.

"I spoke yesterday with the president of Syria, our brother President Bashar al-Assad," Chavez said in a televised ceremony to present low-cost household appliances for Venezuelans.

"From here, we send our solidarity to the Syrian people, to President Bashar. They are resisting imperial aggression, the attacks of the Yankee empire and its European allies."

Despite the general revolutionary doom and gloom, in the wake of Chavez's address to the masses, the sales of low cost household appliances in Venezuela have indeed recovered a little bit. But with the Yankee empire and its European allies gone on rampage wrecking havoc around the world, who knows for how long...